


i don't want to light a fire (unless it will warm your heart)

by nooelgallagher



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, M/M, Overall just some wholesome holiday goodness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:00:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21619606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nooelgallagher/pseuds/nooelgallagher
Summary: The last thing - truly the last thing - that Alex expected to find on Michael’s nightstand was a list that looked like this:1. Tree2. Lights (color no white)3. Wreaths/decorations4. Wrapping paper5. CookiesIt’s in Michael’s scrawly handwriting, tilted at a slant and all the R’s are capitalized. There’s no title, but lights? Tree? Alex can only assume, which feels like a huge assumption, that Michael has created a Christmas list.
Relationships: Michael Guerin & Alex Manes
Comments: 26
Kudos: 82





	i don't want to light a fire (unless it will warm your heart)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Amanda's (bisexualalienblast) birthday.
> 
> Song title from I Don't Wanna Spend One More Christmas Without You by *NSYNC.
> 
> I wrote this between about 3-4:45 am, hopefully you all enjoy it.

The last thing - truly the _ last _ thing - that Alex expected to find on Michael’s nightstand was a list that looked like this:

  1. _Tree_
  2. _Lights (color no white)_
  3. _Wreaths__/decorations_
  4. _Wrapping paper_
  5. _Cookies_

It’s in Michael’s scrawly handwriting, tilted at a slant and all the R’s are capitalized. There’s no title, but lights? Tree? Alex can only assume, which feels like a huge assumption, that Michael has created a Christmas list.

Michael hadn’t wanted to do too much for Thanksgiving. Liz had invited them over to her house for the meal with her father, but Michael didn’t seem to be too much in the mood for it so they had politely declined in favor of ordering Chinese food and navigating the inundation of Christmas movies on TV. Eventually they’d landed on flipping between Love Actually, A Christmas Carol, and Die Hard until they fell asleep on Alex’s couch.

That’s why this list that is quite literally covered in Christmas seems so out of place. The truth is, Alex and Michael haven’t yet tackled the whole holiday topic. Alex doesn’t have many fond holiday memories after his mom left. His father, shockingly, wasn’t big on sentiment and with the exception of a few odd practical gifts - socks, clothes that were definitely _ not _ Alex’s style, and gas station gift cards - Jesse Manes had barely acknowledged the holiday. Alex’s brothers were a little bit better; they managed to get him stuff he actually could use like iTunes gift cards or something, but Christmas in the Manes household was a pretty generic affair.

And Michael… Well, Alex really doesn’t know how Michael spent his Christmases. Honestly he never gave too much thought to how Michael would have spent winter break back in high school. When he was sleeping in his truck, did he just drive around the whole week since they weren’t in school?

These are all hefty thoughts to have at 7:30 in the morning when he can hear Michael in the shower, Alex still has to haul himself up to get ready to go to the base, and Alex doesn’t even really know why Michael wrote this list at all. He resolves to put it out of his mind for the time being, choosing to shuck off the blankets and join Michael in the shower.

\---

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to wait long to find out because two days later Alex comes home to Michael shoving a 6 foot tall white fir tree through Alex’s front door.

“Michael…” Alex says slowly as he climbs the wooden steps to the porch, the _ crick crick crick _ of each step mostly drowned out by the rattle of needles as Michael shimmies the tree through the door.

Michael pauses and peers around the side of the tree. His face doesn’t give anything away, a real feat given that he’s got his gloved hands wrapped around the branches of a tree that realistically might not fit through the doorway. “Hey. I wanted to have this in before you got home.”

Alex raises his eyebrows and does a deliberate up and down look over the tree. “And what exactly is this?”

“A tree,” Michael answers, turning back to his task of making sure the top of the tree doesn’t get lopped off by the doorframe.

“I can see that,” Alex replies, “but what are _ you _ doing?”

Michael stops his movements again and looks around the tree again. “I got you a Christmas tree.”

Alex, within a split second, realizes he has two options. One, he could press for more information - like why the hell Michael Guerin of all people went out of his way to get Alex a Christmas tree when Michael has never given the slightest indication he cares for tradition or festivities of any kind.

Two, he could keep his mouth shut and let it happen because in the next second his brain flashes back to the list he’d found on Michael’s nightstand. The list that wasn’t there the next time Alex slept over.

It doesn’t take Alex long to make up his mind. Instead, he pulls the sleeves of his sweater over his hands and gives a shove at the tree. He feels it give way and then it’s through his door, needles sprinkling down over his porch and the entryway to his cabin. He doesn’t say a word as he watches Michael drag it into the living room into a corner that used to hold a box of old newspapers that belonged to Kyle’s dad and Alex wasn’t sure what to do with yet. The box isn’t anywhere to be found.

A bit to Alex’s surprise, Michael merely sets the tree in place and makes sure that the stand is locked from below. He tugs off his gloves and shoves them into his back pocket before he walks the few steps that separate them and gives Alex a quick kiss. Alex wraps a hand around the back of Michael’s neck to keep him in place.

“Hi,” Alex says, smiling in spite of the fact that he feels _ really _ fucking confused at the moment.

“Hi,” Michael says back and pecks Alex on the lips again. “Are you hungry?”

Alex nods. “There’s some leftover spaghetti in the fridge. And I think some garlic bread.”

“Sounds good,” Michael answers, and then they’re kissing again and the spaghetti just has to wait.

\---

If it wasn’t for the fact that Alex was present for its arrival, Alex isn’t sure he would have even noticed it in his house at all. It stays painfully bare for a few days, totally at home in the woodsy feel of the cabin but completely out of place given its, well, lack of Christmas cheer. But he still keeps his mouth shut, feeling like there’s more to the overall picture here than he can figure out at the moment. So the tree just lives in its corner. Alex makes sure to water it every day and uses his hand vacuum to suck up any needles that fall.

Alex comes home another evening after spending the majority of his afternoon with Kyle digging through some old Project Shepherd files that Kyle had stored away on a flash drive. Michael’s truck is in his driveway, and the lights are on in his living room. Alex knows Michael can hear him climb the steps but he still doesn’t look up when Alex walks in.

He’s too busy detangling a long strand of Christmas lights.

Alex hears him mutter a “fucking pieces of shit” before looking up and smiling at him, just a little.

“Hey,” MIchael greets and then he’s back to his task.

Alex uses the opportunity of Michael’s distraction to take in the display in front of him. It looks like the Christmas Wonder Shop at Target exploded over his living room floor and couch. There are several unopened packages of tree lights (all color), boxes of ornaments and bulbs, a pack of hooks for the ornaments, and a star that Alex can read from the packaging lights up.

Alex crosses his arms over his chest and watches Michael fight with the lights for a second before a flash of his eyes has the strand slowly start to unravel. He guides the lights with his hands but Alex knows it’s his mind that’s doing all the heavy lifting at that moment. He watches the satisfied smirk on Michael’s face once it’s finally unraveled.

“Did you leave anything for anyone else?” Alex asks, leaning down to pick up a box of ornaments. They have glitter - not exactly something that he would have pictured Michael picking out, but they’re a deep blue, almost black, and the glitter catches the light and Alex can visualize how beautiful they’d look on a tree.

“Believe me, there is _ no _ shortage of Christmas stuff left. I’m pretty sure the only place that doesn’t have them is the Petro outside of town and I think even they might have some wreaths or something.”

Alex sets the ornaments down where he found them and walks through the landmine of decorations to reach Michael. Michael pulls him in for a kiss and tugs him into his side, looking up at the tree.

“How’s your eye for hanging lights?” he asks.

Alex shrugs. “It’s been a few years, but I think I’m alright. My mom taught me.”

“Good,” Michael replies, and he lets go of Alex to pick up the lights he just detangled, handing them over to him. “Let’s do it.”

It feels like a parallel universe with Michael handing him tree lights unironically and asking for his help hanging them. But Alex is determined to keep with keeping his mouth shut, and so he just accepts the lights and finds the end that plugs into the wall.

“First thing’s first, don’t try to wrap them around the tree when they’re lit up because it’ll throw off your perception of where they need to go…”

An hour later, all the lights are hung and the bulbs are strategically placed all around the tree. There’s a level of coordination that Michael was insistent on (_ “No, there’s already a green one there, we need to move it to another spot.” _ or _ “I see a big gap, we need more on this side.” _). The confusion at the whole thing gave way pretty quickly to pure enjoyment at the whole thing. There he was, in his cabin with Michael Guerin decorating a Christmas tree in lights and ornaments and stepping around each other to pick up a fallen hook or bulb that rolled away or tug the lights this way or that to make sure everything was even.

At the end of it all, Michael unpacks the star from its box and holds it up. He lets go and it floats midair until he guides it up to the top of the tree. He sets it as upright as he can but the tree isn’t even and it’s a little lopsided, but Michael gives up after a couple of seconds when it looks as good as it’s going to get. Then he reaches into the tree to grab its plug, plugging it into the end of one strand of lights so the star lights up too.

It’s rainbow.

Alex takes a few steps back to take in the whole tree, and Michael joins him. They stand side by side and take in their work. Alex’s cabin is glowing in a sea of colors, and it’s never looked more like a home.

\---

Michael doesn’t stop at the tree. Two days later, Alex comes home to see his whole front porch wrapped in lights - again, all color. There’s a wreath with red and white bows on his front door. His house has become a beacon in the dark, especially since there isn’t anyone else around for a couple of miles. Alex spots a few more additions: tinsel wrapped around the bannister of the porch steps, a couple of electric candles in the window. Inside, Alex spots a candle that smells like cinnamon that he knows he _ definitely _ didn’t purchase. And Michael is in the kitchen hunched over Alex’s laptop, a bag of takeout on the table next to him.

When he sees Alex come into the room, he shuts the laptop and stands to greet him, giving him a kiss as has become customary recently and asking Alex how his day was and if he’s hungry and if they get to bed early enough they’ll have time for some _ fun activities _.

So, even though it’s kind of starting to kill him, Alex doesn’t say anything about the decorations. He just accepts Michael’s kiss and wandering fingers around the hem of his jeans. They eat dinner together and then fall into bed together and the whole time Alex just hugs Michael a little tighter.

\---

Alex almost, _ almost _, caves at the stack of wrapping paper he finds propped up against his back door.

\---

It’s getting harder not to ask questions when Michael asks if Alex ever made sugar cookies before and Alex tells him he thinks he has his mom’s recipe somewhere, which sends him on a nearly forty five minute quest through some of the boxes he never unpacked to unearth it. He does find it, written on a yellowed index card that is smudged with the flour and butter of cookies of Christmas past. Michael takes it and investigates it, committing it to memory.

The next afternoon, Alex wakes up from a nap on his couch to find Michael in his kitchen rolling out sugar cookie dough. Well, a rolling pin is rolling it out with the help of Michael’s mind as Michael himself dips a cookie cutter in flour.

_ What the hell is this??????????? _ is what’s screaming in Alex’s head because _ seriously _ this has to be the weirdest thing yet.

Michael Guerin. In his kitchen. Making sugar cookies shaped like snowmen and stars and _ is that edible glitter _?

It takes quite literally every ounce of self-control Alex still has to just roll up the sleeves of his shirt and ask if Michael wants any help.

\---

After the cookies, everything Christmas-related kind of just seems to pause. The tree still glows, Alex snacks on the remainder of the cookies before they go stale, and the wrapping paper disappears from the backdoor but a few wrapped presents appear under the tree. Michael never says a word.

The nights they stay at Michael’s, Alex notices that it’s lacking in anything festive. It’s a far cry from his cabin that Michael decked out and Alex wants to know why. He chooses not to ask.

The only person he mentions any of this to is Kyle because Kyle seems to have a clarity of mind surrounding Michael that Alex doesn’t. He told Kyle about the tree, and the decorations, and the cheerful wrapping paper and even the cookies. And Kyle hadn’t offered up much wisdom about it, asking Alex every time why he didn’t just _ ask _ Michael what was with all the Christmas cheer, but when Alex finally comments about Michael’s Airstream and its opposite energy Kyle finally has a thought.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs as he lifts the rim of his beer bottle to his lips, “but it sounds to me like he made a huge effort into making your house feel like a home and his just doesn’t.”

Alex shakes his head. “We agreed to keep our own places, for now anyway. To keep the pressure off.”

“Manes, he turned your house into a lowkey Hallmark movie,” Kyle says with a smirk. “There are presents under your tree. He baked cookies which honestly _ blows my mind _. I don’t think pressure is something he’s worried about.”

Alex doesn’t know what to make of it all, and it’s only made worse when Kyle drops another bomb on him:

“In all seriousness, though,” Kyle says, his low and measured. He actually _ sounds _ serious and Alex looks him in the eye, “I wasn’t going to mention this but I think it’s relevant.”

“What?” Alex prods, his heart picking up pace.

“Guerin came by my place the other day,” Kyle begins slowly, “and told me he had something for me. It was this old box of newspapers.”

Alex’s brain flies back to the mysteriously missing box of newspapers that used to live where his tree currently stands.

“And I was like what even is all this, why are you giving it to me, blah blah,” Kyle goes on, waving his bottle around for effect. “And he tells me that it’s all stuff my dad kept about me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Articles from high school when I won any sports games. There was some blurb when I graduated med school. Just like, all this old shit I didn’t even know existed and my dad kept. And I never would have known about it if Guerin didn’t give it to me.”

Alex can feel his forehead tightening up as his brain tries to wrap around all of this. “What are you saying, Kyle?”

“That maybe Guerin…” he starts, then pauses to rechoose his words. “I think you need to ask him, but I think you already know.”

“Obviously I don’t!”

“Guerin never had a family, Alex,” Kyle says, “not really. He never had a dad who kept records of all his accomplishments and stored them away for safekeeping.”

“Neither did I,” Alex bites out, immediately regretting how bitter he sounds.

“Exactly,” Kyle says. “He could have thrown all those newspapers out without looking at them. I’m guessing they came from the cabin. But he looked and he sorted through them and he shows up at my house one day with a pile of them saying that he thought I’d want to have them.”

Alex’s brain is firing off at warp speed, still not entirely sure what this has to do with him or Michael and Michael’s newfound Christmas spirit but Kyle cuts through his thoughts again.

“Think about it, Manes,” Kyle tells him. “You two aren’t so different. I think he’s trying to tell you something here. Not about the importance of Christmas spirit or whatever. But he made an effort with you, with me, even. I think you know why but I think you should still talk to him.”

If possible Alex finishes the conversation with Kyle more confused than he started, but Kyle’s insistence that he talk to Michael lingers and he decides that he will. Just not tonight.

\---

For someone who had been chomping at the bit to bombard Michael with questions before, Alex finds that he doesn’t really know how to bring it up once he makes up his mind to do it. Instead, the days creep closer and closer to Christmas and suddenly it’s Christmas Eve and Alex feels so completely lost.

Michael has made no mention of the holiday, or the gifts under the tree that Alex assumes are for him. He had gotten Michael a few gifts himself but they are tucked away in his closet. He didn’t know if putting them under the tree would call too much attention to a topic that Michael had done a good job of avoiding so far.

But Christmas Eve kind of makes it glaringly obvious that Michael spent the better part of a month making Alex’s cabin a Christmas wonderland and they’ve tiptoed around that issue for just as long and now they’re sitting on Alex’s couch passing a bowl of popcorn back and forth with the star on the top of the tree casting a glare onto the TV.

They finish the popcorn and Michael retrieves a beer for each of them. His hand rests along the back of the couch and his fingers ghost over the nape of Alex’s neck, his fingers twisting in the hair there and giving soft tugs every so often. It grounds Alex into the moment.

A moment that is shattered when Michael, without notice, says, “I love you, you know?”

Alex freezes, his eyes glued to the TV but he can feel his mouth dry up and his jaw drop open and Michael’s hand is still in his hair and he’s not even looking at Alex but Alex swears he can _ hear _ Michael’s heart pounding in his chest.

Michael said I love you to him once before, just once, in the dark after they had collapsed into the bed boneless and breathless and Alex was starting to doze so he thinks Michael thought he couldn’t hear him. But never like this, never so out loud and out there and into space.

Alex turns and Michael’s hand falls away to the back of the couch, still behind Alex but no longer touching him. Alex goes to reply but Michael cuts him off.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d go along with this whole thing,” Michael tells him, waving his free hand around the room to gesture at all the decorations and the tree. “I thought for sure you’d ask me a million questions about it. But you didn’t.”

“I wanted to,” Alex says, his voice scratchy. His mind feels like an alarm is going off with _ so are we just going to ignore the whole I love you thing? _

“Thank you for not asking me,” Michael says. “I just wanted to see what it felt like. To be normal for once. To have a tree and lights and buy wrapping paper and bake cookies and just, like, live in a home that felt like a home.”

Kyle’s words come echoing back, faintly but there: _ Guerin never had a family. _

“Kyle told me you gave him some newspapers his dad kept,” Alex says carefully. “Why?”

Instead of answering, Michael stands up and goes to the tree. He grabs a small box from the top of the pile and walks back to the couch, handing Alex the box.

“Open it,” is all he says.

The wrapping paper is silver and red and sparkles in the light. It’s also pretty lightweight. Alex's insides feel all over the place, the conversation jumping around so much and Michael still isn’t really making any sense though maybe he’s starting to and maybe if Alex can just listen it’ll come together.

Alex carefully peels one taped end of the present open and tears the paper open to reveal what’s inside. He first notices the worn wood of a picture frame, and then looks through the glass to see what’s there.

An old headline reads: _ Youngest Manes Receives Purple Heart, Celebration to Follow Homecoming _

Alex remembers seeing the article before he officially came home. He’d never kept a copy for himself, never really feeling like it was important enough to commemorate that all he did was survive.

But there it is: a cutout of the article from the newspaper preserved behind the glass, edges of the paper a bit warped but in decent condition.

Alex realizes where Michael must have gotten it.

“Was this Jim’s?”

“The paper was, I just got your article out of it. There were a few more I kept. But this was in the best condition.”

Alex furrows his eyebrows. “Why?”  
  


“Because your dad never saw you for who you are, or all that you did. But… Kyle’s dad did. And I wanted you to have proof that someone cared about you.” He takes a deep breath and keeps going: “And all this Christmas stuff was for you too. Because I know you didn’t really have them growing up either. And I know it’s bullshit and capitalist and maybe it’s stupid but I just wanted us to have this together.”

Alex sets the picture down on the coffee table in front of them and grabs Michael’s hand that’s been behind him on the couch. “None of it is stupid. I was confused, I’ll admit, but I’ve loved every minute of it. I mean, you decked out my cabin in rainbows and nothing would piss my dad off more.”

Michael can’t help but laugh at that and he grabs for Alex’s other hand with his free one. “I thought it might be too much but I hate white lights. They’re really yellow, if you look at them-”

Alex cuts him off with a kiss, letting go of his hands to cup Michael’s cheeks between his own and pressing their foreheads together. “Merry Christmas, I love you.”

The words catch on the air between them and Michael swallows it by kissing Alex again.

\---

The next morning, after they’ve slept in late and Alex brings some Pillsbury cinnamon rolls back to bed (he tells Michael how it was one of his mom’s favorite traditions to have them Christmas morning), Michael holds Alex’s hand above them to link their fingers together.

He tells Alex that the little alien keychain now hanging off his keyring - next to the key to his Airstream and the key to Alex’s cabin - is the best present he’s ever gotten.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr at nooelgallagher.


End file.
